Friday, March 16, 2018

No one has forgotten Lonesome Dove, and it ain’t
likely anyone ever will. But I re-read (or more precisely re-listened to) it
recently, and discovered a few things I'd forgotten.

Remember when there were shops specializing in
renting audiobooks on cassette? Yeah, there really were such places, some
twenty-odd years ago. That’s when and where I came upon a copy of the
unabridged reading of this book by Lee Horsley. Yeah, I’m talking about the
Archie Goodwin-Matt Houston-Guns of Paradise Lee Horsley, who I didn’t
especially like on TV, but who did a masterful job with this novel. It stuck in
my brain ever since as the perfect marriage of narrator to book, and I’ve been
hankering for another listen ever since.

Well, I finally got one, and I’m pleased to report
it’s still every bit as good as I remembered. And while Horsley’s narration
makes it shine, the real star of the book is Larry McMurtry’s prose. I have to
say that word-for-word, the first half of this novel is one of the most
entertaining reads I’ve ever had.

Point of view shifts quickly, often from one
paragraph to the next, introducing us to a huge cast of outrageously
captivating characters. Each has his own cockeyed world view, and many of the
lines are laugh-out-loud funny. McMurtry keeps the yuks coming through most of
the first half, leaving me agog with envy.

But somewhere in the middle, things turn serious.
McMurtry’s West is a grim and deadly place, and the further our cast of
characters stray from Lonesome Dove, the grimmer and deadlier it gets. The new
characters we meet are dumber and duller, and the older ones stop having fun.
Point of view shifts much slower, and we’re stuck with dumb, dull folks for way
too long. That’s when a lot of people start dying, while others are subjected
to such misery they wish they could die (and I was rooting for them to hurry up
and do it).

This is still a great novel, of course. There’s a
reason it won a Pulitzer Prize. And while I’d like it better if the humor of
the first half filled the whole book, chances are it would now be largely
forgotten, rather than the cornerstone of a franchise that spawned three more
novels, more TV miniseries than I can count and at least couple of regular TV
series.

So I
think everyone should read it. Or better yet, listen to it, if you’re lucky
enough to score the Horsley version. Just don’t be surprised when it turns your
smile upside down.

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

This tale, from the July 1961 issue of the Catholic comic book Treasure Chest, was uploaded to comicbookplusby the user movielover. It's a great example of the pencil and ink skills of Mr. Reed Crandall.

Sunday, March 11, 2018

Here’s the good news: This first film version of The Shadow was based on the pulp magazine rather than on the radio show. (The pulp character, by my reckoning, is the real Shadow, and the other guy an imposter). The movie is based on the novel “The Ghost of the Manor” from the June 15, 1933 issue.

But the bad news is: Despite the cool title, The Shadow never really Strikes. In fact, he’s hardly present at all. This is really just an average low-budget mystery in which the hero twice dons a cape, for a total screen time of just over a minute.

As the film opens, we meet an unnamed gentleman and his aide. The gentleman is examining the bullet that killed his father, a high-profile attorney killed by the racketeers he crusaded against. The gentleman professes a desire to learn who fired the bullet.Our hero spends the rest of the film solving a couple of mundane manor house murders and pretending to be an attorney named Chester Randall. Why this Randall persona was necessary is more than I can figure. In the pulp story, The Shadow was masquerading as Lamont Cranston, currently vacationing in Timbuktu. Anyway, it’s pretty tame stuff. A couple of guns are fired, but no one is shot on camera, and we don’t even get a fist fight.In The Shadow’s first brief appearance, he wears a normal narrow-brimmed fedora and has a cape draped casually over a shoulder or two. Though his face appears to be in full view of the bad guys, they immediately know him as The Shadow. Hm.Next time he pops in, he has the high collar of his cape turned up, so folks see just his eyes. This is more effective, but all he does is stand there, point a gun, and vamoose.Only at the very end of the film, via a newspaper article, do we learn that our gentleman hero is amateur criminologist “Lamont Granston.” Yes, Granston with a G. Why? I’ve no idea. Unlike the Cranston we know from the magazine, he doesn’t know anybody and nobody knows him, so he parades around in his own face without being recognized. The mystery of who shot his father is never resolved, though the film ends with him studying a bullet recovered during the case.

Rod LaRocque makes a decent film detective. He always wears a slightly amused look, like a slightly older and fleshier version of Warren William. This adds a little comic relief, and we get more from the byplay between him and his aide. Trouble is, he’s not Lamont Cranston, or even Granston.The film is otherwise not horrible. It’s a typical cheapie, with passable acting and occasionally good dialogue. A musical soundtrack would have helped a lot, but I guess that wasn’t in the budget. It’s only really bad if you watch it expecting to see The Shadow.

AHMM July/Aug 2016

AHMM May 2015

A Black Dog Book

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When not blogging, I write mysteries and historical adventure. I am the proud (and mighty dang lucky) recipient of the Mystery Writers of America 2011 Robert L. Fish Award. My AHMM story "The Continental Opposite" was nominated for a Shamus award and selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2016.